A new poll of Republican primary voters nationwide shows reality TV star Donald Trump maintaining his lead for the presidential nomination with 27 percent support. Closest behind Trump are Florida senator Marco Rubio at 17 percent, Texas senator Ted Cruz at 16 percent, and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, also at 16 percent.
The new poll shows mostly steady support for Trump, who was at 24 percent support in Quinnipiac’s November poll and at 28 percent in the August poll. Both Rubio and Cruz have seen significant jumps in support over the last few months, with both gaining three points on their position in the November Quinnipiac poll. Rubio is now doing 10 points better, and Cruz 9 points better, than in August.
The poll does show a significant seven-point drop for Carson, though. The one-time leader in a few national polls had 23 percent support in November, just one point shy of Trump. Carson is one point below where he was in September (17 percent support) but still higher than his 12 percent support in August.
The remaining candidates all fall into single digits, with the leader among them, Jeb Bush, polling at just five percent. That’s not significantly better than Bush’s four percent support in November, and it’s far from Bush’s peak in the Quinnipiac poll at 16 percent, way back in March.
There are signs, though, that the Republican presidential primary is still wide open. According to Quinnipiac, 65 percent of Republicans say they have not made up their minds about which candidate they will support. That figure is 71 percent for those who say they support Carson, 65 percent for those who say they support Cruz, and 75 percent for those who say they support Rubio. Among the top four candidates, Trump has the most committed supporters, with just 53 percent saying their mind is not yet made up.
In four hypothetical matchups between the leading Republicans and likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Clinton leads every candidate, though she has just a one-point advantage over Rubio, 45 percent to 44 percent. Clinton is beating Trump 47 percent to 41 percent, beating Cruz 47 percent to 42 percent, and beating Carson 46 percent to 43 percent.
